Design and implementation of the cooperative cache for PVFS

Abstract

Recently, there have been many efforts to get high performance in cluster computing with inexpensive PCs connected through high-speed networks. Some of them were to provide high bandwidth and parallelism in file service using a distributed file system. Other researches for distributed file systems include the cooperative cache that reduces servers' load and improves overall performance. The cooperative cache shares file caches among clients so that a client can request a file to another client, not to the server, through interclient message passing. In various distributed file systems, PVFS (Parallel Virtual File System) provides high performance with parallel I/O in Linux widely used in cluster computing. However, PVFS doesn't support any file cache facility. This paper describes the design and implementation of the cooperative cache for PVFS (Coopc-PVFS). We show the efficiency of Coopc-PVFS in comparison to original PVFS. As a result, the response time of Coopc-PVFS is shorter than or similar to that of original PVFS. © Springer-Verlag 2004.